


black

by orphan_account



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M, eddie has anxiety ! richie can't deal properly with stuff ! but everything ends happily !, went and maggie tozier are Good Parents but sonia is definitely not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22191529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: based on my tumblr post (@7-losers):"au where you wake up on your 18th birthday and see where your soulmate first touches you. and – eddie and richie don’t know each other at this point – but they wake up on their birthdays and – “shit?? my knuckle is black ??” they’ve both heard of people hating or hitting their soulmates but neither of them ever thought or wanted it to be them because that leads to a whole other discussion. and they both panic for a couple years and..."
Relationships: Background: - Relationship, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 193





	1. the whole story

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for overall anxiety and a quick mention of disordered eating

Richie wakes up with the unbearable urge to _move_.

Saturdays in April: He would normally dick around in bed until noon, mosey to the kitchen to make himself some buttered toast, and call Stanley, Beverly, and-or Ben. Today, though, this energy rips him out of bed and throws him into a dashed frenzy. He’s tearing off his pajamas, boxers, socks, anything that could be touching his skin.

On this particular Saturday, Richie turns eighteen.

This means a lot of things: he doesn’t have to bum cigarettes off of Bev (or anybody else, for that matter); he can vote in the next election; and, although he doesn’t feel like it, he is officially an adult.

This also means that he’s gotten The Mark (ominous capitalization _definitely_ necessary).

Soulmates and The Mark have concurrently dated back hundreds of years. Richie’s sure there are hundreds and thousands of books – research journals, historical non-fiction-slash-fiction chapters, young adult novels – that attempt to capture the essence of why people have soulmates, why the mark shows when you’re eighteen, yadda yadda. He’s sure they exist. He doesn’t have the attention span for the long, technical documents.

(He really likes the young adult books, though).

He slept, but woke up every couple hours, ready for the morning. And when morning came, he felt deprived. Antsy. Maybe ready to throw up? His mind is all over the place.

So when he completely overlooks his mark, it’s not a huge surprise. Richie has never described himself as detail-oriented.

He’s looking at himself, now fully naked, in the mirror that is attached to his bedroom door. Face, nothing. Neck, nothing. Chest, legs, feet, butt – nothing.

“What the fuck,” he whispers, exasperated. Eyes still drawn to the mirror, he digs his fingers into his hair, trying to see anything that could resemble a black mark (which is increasingly difficult, especially considering the matching shade of his own disheveled hair).

He shifts his gaze and pulls his fingers out of the knots in his hair. And he sees it.

Well, he scans it quickly. He’s still moving to their next target – _time to get cracking_ , he thinks, hands lowering on his body – and it takes a full five seconds to realize that the skin between the second and third knuckles on his right hand are ink black.

Richie, whose brain is usually speeding at one hundred thoughts per minute, cannot process.

Two minutes of mostly blank thoughts later:

“Do I fucking _punch_ them?”

His chest is crushed under a wave of – disappointment? Anger?

He didn’t know what he expected, but sucker punching his soulmate was definitely not it.

Richie, glasses escaping down his nose in absent-minded shock, does what he always does when he’s bursting at the seams: He calls Stanley.

Stanley picks up quickly with a kind, “Happy birthday, Richie.”

“Stan the Man! I uh – well, I thank you kindly, sir – I found it. I found the mark.” Richie feels the onslaught of word vomit, all the thoughts he couldn’t process accurately spewing at Stan. “I woke up and dragged my ass out of bed at 9:25 on a Saturday morning – my _birthday_ Saturday morning – because I _was so excited_ to see it and I just fucking. I found it, but, uh, fucking is not what I will be doing I don’t think.” Stan listens quietly, mulling over Richie’s thunderous rambling before he speaks.

“Let’s go get lunch,” he suggests.

“You know the way to my heart, my loveliest-not-soulmate,” Richie jokes. His tone falls flat. Stan, the blessing that he is, doesn’t comment on it.

***

Richie, desperately needing a way to release his pent-up energy, walks to Derry Diner (“the most original diner in Derry,” Bev calls it).

Bev, Stan, and Ben are sitting in a booth when he arrives. He’s messing with his hands, twirling his fingers around the copious bracelets that adorn his wrist and trying, and failing, to resist the urge to bite his nails.

He slides into the booth next to Stanley, giving him a loud, wet kiss on the top of his head. Ben speaks first, granting him the fourth “happy birthday” of the day, and Beverly and Stanley chime in after him.

“This is all for little ol’ me?” It’s his Southern Belle voice. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.” His hands are drumming on the table in a non-rhythm. Everybody’s eyes move directly to his right hand.

Richie hasn’t felt _this_ self-conscious since middle school.

He changes his accent, deepens his voice. “Surprise! If I didn’t know better, I'd think you had feelings for this monster,” finished lamely with a vulgar hand motion. “Happy birthday, right?”

“Richie,” Beverly’s voice is soft, but she dives right into the matter. “You can’t assume anything with these marks.”

Ben nods, almost aggressive with the ferocity of the movement. “Mine was a handprint on my back,” he says. Richie knows this; they all know this. “It honestly looked like I was slapped.”

Richie thinks Ben and Bev’s soulmate story is adorable. He made the occasional jab at Ben, who turned eighteen before any of them, about being slapped, but he never thought it could be true. Ben is the nicest guy he’s ever met.

“And my entire palm was black!” Beverly exclaims. Richie also joked about Bev slapping someone. It wasn’t until they thought back to fifth grade, when Beverly thumped Ben on the back in a sore attempt to clear water that went down the wrong pipe, that they realized the slapping jibes weren’t one-hundred percent false.

Richie, very gently because he, one, thinks it’s super adorable and, two, loves his friends, poked more fun at it after they remembered that day.

“Yeah, but we both knew that whatever deity responsible for this wouldn’t even dare to subject Miss Beverly Marsh to a soulmate who deserved such a slap,” Richie fumbles over his words. He hopes that makes sense. His mind is still preoccupied on his fingers. They look like they were splashed in black ink. He used to think thought the black was beautiful; now he’s torn.

“Plus, we added two and two together in, like, eight hours. You two are together, Stanley shook my hand back in _kindergarten_ – yeah, you little old man, you know how much I love that – and I – I’ve never punched anyone! Look at me! I’d break my noodle arm.” He rolls his eyes. It’s a joke, but it’s true. Richie, with thick glasses, buck teeth, a face-full of acne, and an uncontrollable mouth, was, not surprisingly, the subject of middle school torment. He only punched back with words.

“Stanley hasn’t even gotten his mark yet!” Ben chimed in again. “Maybe yours is just placed wrong?” They all knew that wasn’t true. There wasn’t a single bit of evidence suggesting marks could be placed improperly.

“I think it would feel different,” Stanley says quietly.

Richie draws out a dramatic ‘fuck’ and rubs his hands under his glasses, over his eyes. His glasses are smudged. “I really don’t want to be a shitsack that punches my soulmate.” He may be an asshole sometimes, but he’s not a shitsack.

“You’ll be our shitsack,” Ben says.

In that moment, Richie feels like it’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to him.

***

Eddie is fine.

Really, he’s _fine_.

It’s a cold December morning. It’s a Tuesday, it’s his last winter break of high school, and it’s snowing.

It also happens to be his birthday.

He wakes up – “wakes up,” as if he slept more than three hours – and, instead of opening his eyes to the sunlight filtering in through his blinds, keeps them shut. He squeezes them so tightly that he sees stars in the black

( _Black_.)

abyss of his eyelids.

He’s never rearranged his room, and can fumble around the foot of his bed, avoid his bookshelf, and open the door to the hallway all without opening his eyes. If he can’t see it, maybe it won’t count?

(He knows this isn’t true; he’s read way too many books about it.)

Eddie’s pulse is pounding loudly in his ears when he enters the bathroom. He can hear his mother messing around downstairs, which makes him nauseous. He’s strips naked, turns the shower on, and steps gingerly under the running water with his eyes screwed shut. Showering without sight is even easier; his eyes are normally closed half of the time, anyways.

Dry off, wrap the towel around his waist, make his way back to his room. Eddie’s in control. He’s in control.

He changes into the clothes he’d set out the night previously. He’s in control.

Fully clothed and far away from any mirrors, Eddie decides it’s safe to open his eyes.

He sees nothing. Control.

He lets out a shaky laugh and runs his left hand through wet hair.

And he sees

( _You don’t have control!_ )

his left knuckle is black.

***

“Please, please, please pick up.” Five hours have passed. Eddie spent one of those winding up, harboring, and calming down from a panic attack. Two of them were spent journaling, long rambling paragraphs and large cuss words that filled up eighteen pages of his journal. Another hour was spent trying to avoid Sonia, who was beginning to worry about his lack of communication.

He spent the final hour taking three small, slow nibbles at a carrot cake (that he ended up spitting into a napkin anyways - he's sure he deserves unhealthy coping for journaling earlier) and watching TV with his mother. She doesn’t even mention the ugly black mark on his hand.

The last hour, two thoughts intertwined and ran through his brain constantly. One, he needs to call Bill. Two, _who the fuck_ does he punch, and _why the fuck_ is that person his _soulmate_?

Bill answers the phone on the fifth ring.

“Happy b-b-birthday, Edd—“

“Thanks but I seriously think I’m dying.”

There’s a short silence. “W-Why do you think that you’re d-d-dying?” Eddie can hear Bill’s sad disappointment through the receiver. Eddie, despite the all-encompassing sense of panic bolting through his entire body, feels bad. He was beginning to get his anxiety under control by talking with the school counselor behind his mother’s back. His mother, who is _so_ worried about his physical health but doesn’t give a shit about his mental health.

“I got the, um.” The words die on his tongue. It’s like there’s a road block, cutting his voice off from his thoughts.

“Can I please come to your house?” Eddie asks quietly. Bill, who is barely younger than Eddie and hasn’t acquired any unmanageable black marks on his skin, seems to remember what eighteen means. Eddie had done a good job hiding his mounting anxiety toward today to his friends, he notes. It’s not a good feeling.

“Of course,” Bill says. Eddie feels his chest swell. He hangs up with a quick, “Thankyouseeyousoonbyebye,” and rushes out the front door before Sonia can ask where he’s going.

***

Eddie’s tearing up for what seems to be the bajillionth time today. _Some great birthday_ , he thinks, wiping away budding tears with his gloved hands. _Thank goodness it’s winter and I can wear gloves._

Bill is standing in the window when Eddie arrives, and go up to his bedroom quickly. Eddie doesn’t know where to start.

“I don’t feel in control,” he starts. It’s the simple truth. He stood up to his mom when he was sixteen; he’d been in control. He counts his calories; he’s in control.

Having a black mark appear on your body – vandalize it, intrude upon it – that determines who your life partner is?

He wants to, but he doesn’t feel in control.

He talks at Bill for hours, talking until his throat hurts. Crying until his eyes are red. Bill holds him and gently runs his thumb over Eddie’s fingers, empathizing with his friend’s pain as much as he can.

But Bill is a doer. After Eddie falls asleep on Bill’s bed, exhausted from the sheer amount of emotion processed in one day, he calls Mike. Bill asks him to buy something at the store before he visits them tomorrow.

***

Four months pass for Richie.

Eight months pass for Eddie.

Through the end of his senior year of high school, Richie takes heated glares from other students. Teachers are gentler, but they still stare. He’s the guy who punches his soulmate. He beats it down with a sharp tongue, fast quips about other kids’ mothers, but he thinks about it when he can’t fall asleep at night. Stan’s birthday comes and goes in July. His mark matches Bev’s: a black palm. That's not very surprising, Stan shakes everybody’s hand.

Eddie wears fingerless gloves.

He dislikes them, and the other high schoolers think they’re dorky. Mike bought them for him the day after his birthday, so he appreciates them, even if they’re silly. They end at his first knuckle, and they cover the mark. _His mark_. He can think the phrase freely, now, and can say it out loud with some trepidation. He still doesn’t like looking at it, though. It’s a blemish, implying a lack of control and anger and a different sort of abuse than the kind his mother gifts him.

He’s learning acceptance. It’s a slow process, but he believes in himself.

***

Eddie’s mom tells him not to room with Bill and Mike in college. He ignores her. He’s taking out loans in his own name to pay for this; he might as well be with people he loves.

Richie’s parents warn him not to live with his friends freshman year of college. He, Stanley, Beverly, and Ben all attend the University of Maine; a safe two and a half hours away from Derry, but still close enough that Richie can visit his parents every other month and maybe have his mom volunteer to do his laundry.

They all live on fifth floor of their dorm. Ben, Stanley, and Richie are in a room together. Beverly is in a room in the other wing of the floor. They got lucky because they’re in a four-person room with three people.

At the end of their “First Year Experience,” the night before the first day of classes, their resident assistant gathers them all in the common area. Richie isn’t listening too well – he’s simultaneously people-watching and making faces at those who are openly staring at his knuckles.

Right now, he’s trying to catch the eye of a guy with auburn hair who will not tear his eyes away from his hand. He has light blue eyes and, c’mon man, it’s unnerving. Richie’s highly aware of it as the meeting continues, and, as the RA finishes his speech, he pokes Stan. “Looks like I got me a looker,” Richie says under his breath. A slow, Alabaman drawl.

“Ignore him,” Stanley tells him. Richie, Bev, and Stan are united in their obvious marks. But Richie can’t ignore him. He’s drawn to this new, small group of guys and he won’t stop trying to make eye contact with this damn kid. He’s bristling in a way he hadn’t felt in a while, not since he was terrorized in middle school, and the guy shifts his gaze. Richie’s eyes follow.

Fingerless gloves.

“No way!” Richie exclaims. He speeds across the room with ease, Stan in tow, now staring at a pair of hands adorned with dark blue fingerless gloves. Richie’s mouth is doing the thing where it speaks without running it by his brain first, and his hands move of their own accord. “I like your gloves!”

He extends his arm for a fist bump.

The boy with the fingerless gloves looks over at Richie, and – _well_. He sure is cute.

He’s half a foot shorter than Richie, with soft-looking brown hair and dark eyes. Freckles are spattered across his nose.

His face scrunches, an endearing mixture of confusion and annoyance, but he still fist bumps Richie back.

There’s a jolt, and everything falls into place.

(“I didn’t punch him!” Richie and Eddie proclaim simultaneously. Eddie turns to Bill, and Richie to Stan. Stan and Bill are shaking hands, both of their faces a shade similar to Beverly’s hair. Stanley mutters something about “shaking everybody’s hand,” but Bill breathlessly jokes, “I d-don’t think I’ve shaken anyone’s hand since m-m-my last f-family reunion ten years ago!” and their marks match pleasantly.)


	2. the in-between: richie, may and june

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning in this chapter for underage drinking and general - false, very false - talk of abuse

**May**

Richie –  _ believe it or not, world! _ – does have feelings.

Despite the “your mom” jokes he’s been tossing effortlessly since fifth grade; despite the affinity toward bright Hawaiian shirts he discovered in seventh grade (that he  _ does _ insist on wearing, Mom, it’s not  _ his _ fault the 40-year-old-white-dad-on-vacation style chose him); and despite the Bucky the Beaver voice he perfected in tenth grade, he  _ does  _ have feelings. 

So when graduation comes, the principal announces a botched version of his last name, he walks across the Derry High gym floor, and someone yells, “Abuser!” very loudly in the midst of polite clapping, it  _ does _ hurt.

He scans the audience, trying to find the heckler, to no avail. Some people are snickering. Most people look confused, eyes scanning his body. Richie tucks his right hand inside his oversized gown sleeve and takes his diploma with his left hand. He opts for a lopsided finger gun instead shaking the principal’s hand and, thankful for his long legs, scampers down back to his seat.

Man, he really needs a pair of gloves or something. He could be like Judd Nelson.

He spends the rest of the ceremony trying to remember the plot of The Breakfast Club (retaining attention only to give Stan an enthusiastic shout when he crosses the stage and chucking his own cap across the length of the gymnasium with the rest of the class at the end of it all).

After gifting Maggie Tozier many pictures of him, Stan, Bev, and Ben, Richie gives his mom a loud, wet kiss on the cheek (not unlike the one he planted on Stanley on his birthday a month ago) and Maggie grabs onto his hand. She rubs her thumb over his black knuckles with a gentle touch, but her eyes are troubled. 

Richie understands the gesture. He may chatter incessantly, but he and his mom have a way without words. He wriggles out her grasp but ruffles her hair anyways. He shot up and grew to be taller than her his sophomore year; since then, mussing her hair – just as she did to him for many, many years – has become a favorite habit of his. 

“Later. I’m gonna celebrate with these losers,” Richie tells her, slinging an arm around Ben and Beverly.

Maggie rolls her eyes, another gentle gesture. She knows her son. “Please don’t drink and drive,” she says. 

“Never ever ever ever,” Richie croons.

“Okay, sweet thing,” Maggie tosses back. “Be safe.”

“Never ever ever ever!”

“We’ll return him in one piece, Mrs. Tozier,” Ben tells her. Maybe three-fourths of a piece. Richie never has enough water when he’s drinking.

*******

Four shots of vodka and two ounces of water later:

“It’s better than nothing!” Richie tells Stan, who is almost always reliable at keeping his liquor to water ratio appropriate. “If I puke, that’s on me! I promise. You try your hardest, Stanny, when will you learn? Don’t worry, be happy, and drink a beer!” 

“ _ You _ drink a beer, Trashmouth,” Stan mumbles back. His comebacks are weaker when he drinks. Weak or not, Richie still laughs, barking, enthusiastic, and galling rolled into one. He abruptly stands from his cross-legged position on the floor, Stanley groaning under his weight when he uses him as a stabilizer. 

“I do think I’ll have a beer! I do think I’ll shotgun a beer!” Richie’s doing his Cockney accent. “Who wants to join me?”

“Richie, you are so bad at shotgunning beers,” Beverly says from the corner of the room. She and Ben are jumbled together on the sofa, both red in the face from sharing drunken body heat.

“You’re not too good yourself, Miss Marsh!” 

“I never claimed to be good at it!” Bev retorts. Not one to back down from the challenge, Beverly finagles her way out of her mess of warm limbs and joins Richie on his way to the kitchen. “Do you want anything, Ben?” she asks, pausing to look at her soulmate. He looks cozy, bundled under blankets and pillows. Bev almost –  _ almost _ , she won’t  _ not  _ shotgun a beer, especially when Richie’s from the East End – returns to him. He nods his head but makes no effort to move.

Richie’s already in the kitchen, digging through the fridge for Miller Lite. “Stan?” His voice carries throughout the house, unnecessary when he’s only one room over. “You want?”

“I don’t want,” Stan replies from the living room. He’s a wine-and-or-liquor person.

“Suit yourself, bud!”

“Don’t use your teeth.” Richie hears Stan’s request but –  _ well _ . The reason other kids call him Bucky the Beaver is valid. He might as well use it to his advantage, right?

(He bites a small hole on one side of the can. Beverly cringes and thwacks him gently with her beer can. Richie takes it, mid-thump, and bites a similar hole.)

Post-burps, complaints about the cold fizz burning their throats, and half-assed pouring water on the half-spilled beer lingering on the back porch (they really aren’t good at shotgunning), the four friends are back in the living room, nestled under a poorly made blanket fort. Ben’s sipping on the beer Bev brought back to him, cheeks pink as Beverly laces her black fingers through his. Stanley mixed together vodka and Sprite and declared it his final drink of the night, but is taking it slowly. Richie also fancied a vodka and Spite, but changed the ratios. It’ll probably be his last drink of the night, too, thanks to the comfort of the blankets, heat, and Stan’s thigh-slash-Richie’s pillow.

“I want to show them they’re wrong,” Richie says. 

Richie, six and a half drinks into the night, can talk freely about his Feelings without voices, without apprehension, and without the almost subconscious fear of being judged.

“I want to come back in ten years, with a cute as hell soulmate, and they have a mark that’s like, on their arm or something, and they love me, because –  _ guess what! _ – I’m not an abusive fuckwad,” he continues. Stan starts to comb his fingers through Richie’s hair, an easing gesture, but quickly stops when his fingers get tangled. Instead, they rest. 

“You’re our fuckwad,” Ben says. Richie has déjà vu. He sits up suddenly, accidentally ripping Stan’s fingers from his hair. His head spins and his chest hurts a bit, but it’s not from the alcohol. Despite being close to falling asleep seconds ago, he’s jittery. He picks at the skin on his right knuckles, chipped black nail polish against ink black.

“But I’m not, like,  _ really _ a fuckwad, you know? I’m just a fake fuckwad. A fakewad.”

“You’re a dork,” Bev chimes in. “You wear neon bowling shirts unironically.”

“You still tell ‘your mom’ jokes,” Ben adds.

“You come bird watching with me even though you suck at it and scare them away,” Stan finalizes. “Who’s bad at watching birds?”

“Me! Exactly!” Richie loves his friends. “I’m not a fucking abuser – but you all know that.” He finishes like an actor would finish performing a monologue, dramatically flopping his head back onto Stan’s thigh.

“College is going to be a great, fresh start,” Ben hums. His eyes are drooping. “We’re gonna have a great time together.”

“Indeed-y,” Richie agrees. Laying on the ground again, he feels a little better. He’s still fidgeting with his fingers, grateful that his friends don’t get annoyed with his constant moving. He’s really, really grateful for his friends.

**June**

“Richie?”

Richie inherited his voice from his father, that’s for sure. Went’s summons, loud yet benign, carries from the kitchen up to Richie’s room, discernible over his music. Richie pauses blaring Toto but, as any teenager, doesn’t immediately go to his father.

“What?” he calls instead.

“Can you come down? Your mom and I would like to talk to you.”

Richie thinks through his Bad Boy List™ as of recent. Underage drinking, but his parents know about that and just want him to be safe; choosing to live with Stan and Ben at the University of Maine come August despite Maggie’s kind suggestions against it, but that’s not serious enough to warrant a family meeting; or super-impulsively painting his small truck (a graduation present, as if college isn’t enough) green at 8:00pm a couple of nights ago. Which his parents  _ did _ end up laughing at, after the initial shock.

He may have an inkling about what the Ominous Meeting is about, maybe, that isn’t on his Bad Boy List™, but he’s hoping it’s not about that, but he also hasn’t talked to them about his mark yet and he knows he should.

So, he bounds down the stairs and walks into the kitchen at an unfortunately speedy pace, curse his long limbs. “You called, Pa?” Richie asks, voice drawling. Demi Moore who?

Went must sense his son’s apprehension; he eases into the Southern façade. “Your ol’ Ma and I just wanna have a li’l chat.” 

“Who are you calling old?” Maggie asks. She’s really bad at accents.

Maggie and Went are sitting at the kitchen table together. Maggie smiles at Richie, and gestures for him to sit down in the seat across from them.

“Jay-sus, did somebody die?” Richie asks, plopping onto the chair. It’s quiet for a beat too long. “Nobody died, right?”

“Nobody died,” Went assures him. “We wanted to talk to you about your mark.”

_ Good ol’ dads. Straight to the point, _ Richie thinks. He tries very, very hard to respond appropriately.

“Which one? I’ve got this, this, this one,” and he starts pointing at the varying sizes and colors of freckles on his face, neck, and arms. He stops when he gets to the mark. “And this big fellow, but he’s the least exciting of all of my freckles. These here on my face actually make a parallelogram – "

“Richie.”

“I know, I know.” Richie drums his fingers on the table, mark visible for his parents to inspect. He squirms under their gazes, despite it being the complete opposite of the attention he garnered at school. And, being honest, he garners the same attention at McDonald’s, at the mall, and the arcade. People really like to assume the worst and, apparently, their parents never taught them it’s rude to stare.

Richie’s self-doubt, buried under layers of comedy and personas, bubbles up again, except this time, he’s not drunk or with his friends, and he is excruciatingly uncomfortable. He’s seriously thinking about jumping up from the table, grabbing his keys, and driving around for a while when his mom grabs his hand across the table and runs her thumb along the mark, just as she did the night of graduation. She breaks the silence, too lengthy in the Tozier house. 

“Richie, it’s okay.”

And, thanks to some unholy, malevolent, embarrassing deity that  _ wants _ Richie to cry in front of his parents, those three simple words break him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> richie and maggie very quickly reference the song 'sweet thing' by the waterboys. 
> 
> since richie's "in-between" is separated into two chapters, eddie's will be too! this is turning out to be a collection of small snippets within this au i guess! shorter chapters work much better with my work schedule. :-)
> 
> thanks for reading!


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